Dreams
by Ferosh
Summary: Set in season 4 episode 15. Zachariah tries teaches the Winchester's of their destiny as hunter's. His plan goes awry when he rips Castiel from his vessel and Dean Smith meets Jimmy Novak in the alternate reality. Castiel needs to reclaim his vessel.


Supernatural.

Dean Smith/Jimmy Novak.

'Jimmy,' sighed Dean, arms wrapped around him. 'Jimmy, you don't really believe in angels, do you?'

Jimmy chewed the pen in his mouth and slotted the notepad onto the coffee table in front of him. The pair were in Dean's apartment. Dean was lolling around on the sofa after a taxing run, drinking low carb beer. Jimmy, nestled in against him, was jotting down a recipe flashing across the television thinking he could get Dean to at least try it if he substituted the beer battered fish for a crumbed fillet.

They had fallen into this rhythm almost instantly, as soon as they had begun seeing each other. Jimmy would come to Dean's house after they both finished work and after Dean had gone to the gym. Jimmy had been at Dean's most nights that week, simply watching television, cooking, talking, laughing and fucking. He had never been in a relationship that was so easy.

Dean was attempting to revisit a conversation they had shared several mornings ago. Jimmy had woken with the faint clouded feeling inside his head that he'd just had a really great dream. The fogginess had begun to fade throughout the morning as the dream had come back to him. It had been somewhat troubling rather than great. Although troubling in the sense that the feeling of urgency stuck with him instead of feelings of terror and fear.

'I mean,' said Dean. 'You think it was just a dream, right?'

'You know I have faith,' Jimmy replied.

'A dream about an angel called Castiel?'

'Yes, Castiel.' Jimmy said the name with familiarity. It seemed common to him like the name one was used to hearing, a name that belonged to an old, dear friend or a relative one had particular fondness for. It was if he spoke the name on a daily basis, it seemed hardly alien or unusual to him. 'Castiel, the angel of the Lord. You were in it too,' he said and nudged Dean in the ribs gently. 'Although, I can't really remember what you had to do with it. My head's still kind of gargled.'

As a totally unreligious man Dean was finding it hard to relate or to even understand Jimmy's insistence that the dream meant something. 'It was just a dream, Jimmy.' He looked at Jimmy squarely, almost frowning but gave a wicked grin when Jimmy smiled at him. 'Come on,' he said, fingers stroking the back of his neck, teasing. 'Bed? I've been having some really _great _dreams.'

'But it was so real.'

Dean rose to his feet, pulling Jimmy up with him. 'Maybe it was one of those lucid dreams,' he suggested.

Before Jimmy was able to retort Dean's lips were on his and he was pulled tightly against the other. It was enough to make all thoughts of the strange visitation from the angel vanish for now. 'Bed?' Jimmy ventured this time. Even as he scampered after Dean he wondered if he'd be visited again.

Jimmy hummed thoughtfully, grinning when Dean murmured something back in his sleep. The man was a notoriously heavy sleeper but had a humorous habit of mumbling in his sleep at random. Only occasionally did Jimmy catch full words, mostly just inconsistent noises. He bumped his forehead gently against Dean's and rested his head on the pillow next to him.

'Dear Lord,' Jimmy began, 'Lord, I – I don't know if what your angel said is true. I have prayed for this, ever since my childhood I've prepared to serve.' Despite how many times he had prayed to God, it still felt awkward for him, especially with Dean beside him who infamously didn't have faith. 'Just know that I am here to serve and my life is yours, and ... amen.'

Rolling away from Dean, he turned over on his side expecting to see a bedside table containing a bible. Of course he wasn't at his home, he was with Dean. Dean didn't have a bible which unnerved Jimmy. The majority of people Jimmy knew who didn't have faith still had a bible in their homes. It was convention. He had intended to place his hand on the bible cover like he did most nights. Instead he placed his hand on his heart and repeated his words in his head. He added small thanks for the blessing of Dean and settled back to find sleep.

Still he didn't sleep, or he slept as carefully as a lamb who knows there are wolves close. With one eye open he fitfully and half heartedly attempted to sleep. By his lose count on the time it had been only five minutes after settling to sleep that the light burst behind his eyelids.

The sheering light was so intensely bright; Jimmy wanted to scream. He knew it should be painful, or cause some discomfort. The light thundering through his retinas was bright like he was staring into the heart of the sun. Yet it wasn't hurting or blinding him. He wanted to scream just to have some reaction. As quickly as the light flared up it was gone. With the light seeming to spread throughout his brain, he sat up in bed attempting to see beyond it, groping at the bedcovers wildly.

His frantic panic ceased the second he heard his angel's voice carol gently. He almost cursed himself for not having presence of mind to guess that this was another visitation. Soft, he couldn't tell what they were but they felt like ropes, tumbled around his wrists and hands as if comforting and caressing him. The ropes were warm. When they tightened around his wrist he felt as though he were being pulled away, leaving his body behind. The light behind his lids lessened as the angel tugged fervently, the voice still softly humming and making buzzing noises that Jimmy couldn't quite wrap his head around. The whole experience, Jimmy could sum up, was a somewhat like being shoved inside a television set that was short-circuiting.

As the light faded, his other senses kicked in. The ropes around his hands were slipping away leaving pleasantly hot, searing sensations. Jimmy touched a hand to his wrist feeling a slight raised ridge. He had been burned yet it didn't hurt or smart when touched. His fingers went to his other hand and felt that the burn marks there were already dissolving. When he regained his sight fully there were no marks to speak of and the sensation was subsiding. His hearing became fully functional last and he was able to discern the voice of the angel, Castiel.

'Jimmy Novak. Jimmy Novak. Jimmy Novak. Jimmy Novak.'

Again and again and again, like a beckoning call or more accurately, a summoning.

The angel had appeared in a truly unfathomably massive form. If Jimmy had to guess he'd estimate the angel to be the height of the Chrysler Building. But the angel didn't seem to have any true, solid form. There was a faint mist that hung before him in the air, stories high. It billowed, swirled and hung such as steam from a train would when buffeted by a light wind. The mist always coiled around itself and turned inwards up towards the centre of the mist as if it were moving through the heart. Jimmy found he had begun to follow the angel without thinking and it moved, regrouped and reformed itself, always replenishing through its centre.

The angel's voice reverberated around his head. 'You prayed for this.'

'I, uh – I did,' Jimmy breathed out nearly stumbling over his feet as he tried to keep up. 'But,' his voice fell. He scared that this question wasn't in his right to ask. 'Why haven't I been called on before now?'

'You have been'

Jimmy hadn't the time to express his surprise and confusion. Castiel began to abruptly change. The swirling threads of mist all turned inwards at once and swarmed together, entwining and tangling. With a dull flash, the angel's height shot down until Jimmy was level with its form, the threads still pooling around each other. After another dull flash Jimmy found he was staring at his own back, clad in his favourite coat. The silvery mist of the angel still coiled out his doppelgangers arm, tenderly encircling the wrist before vanishing inside the fingertips. The angel didn't turn around to face him in Jimmy's own representation. If he had Jimmy would have seen that it was not a correct copy of him, nothing was exactly the same. The angel still elicited the silver and white glow which gave it a completely unworldly appearance.

'I need your help,' it spoke. It still did not turn to face him. 'Do you deny me, Jimmy Novak?' Even the angel's voice was a little gruffer, imitating his own but still margins off. 'You have prayed for this.'

'No, I mean, no I don't deny you.'

'Then pay attention.'

The scene that held nothing shifted around them. The expanse they had been walking through, which Jimmy had paid no attention to, was cleared out as though someone was picking up a picture frame, shaking out its contents and slotting in a new image. What replaced it was a glade in autumn. The trees that circled where they stood held few leaves and with every cold gust of wind more fell to the ground. The grass on which they stood was pocketed with muddy puddles and gravel discarded from the single track leading to the glade. A lonely picnic table stood moss covered a few feet away from where the gravel road ended. At the end of that road an old car was parked, glimmering when the sun hit the dew on its windscreen.

Two figures emerged from the trees, away from the road, to the left of the car. They were bickering but without much effort as though playing out dutiful roles they were well accustomed to.

Jimmy drew in a breath of surprise. It was Dean, walking towards the car with an absurdly tall man that Jimmy knew to be his friend Sam. They played squash together sometimes.

'Sam, just shut up!' Dean finally barked loudly causing Sam to frown deeply and let out an exasperated sigh.

'Dean, it wasn't your fault.'

Dean had spotted him. 'Cas!' he yelled, sprinting over, leaves crunching under his feet and water flying around his ankles as he splashed through a puddle.

Jimmy felt his arms lift as Dean ran towards them. The face and the voice were exactly the same, the body was the same, except... except Dean looked utterly tormented and exhausted. Jimmy's breath hitched when he saw blood on Dean's check and jaw line, his hands too. 'Wh- what's going on?' he stuttered.

Castiel ignored him, or hadn't heard him. The angel stumbled backwards as Dean thundered into a hug. Jimmy stared at Dean's face slotted above Castiel's shoulder. His hands had clenched in Castiel's, no _his, _trench coat. The torment in Dean's face was ebbing away slightly.

'You_sonofabitch,' _Dean hissed out in one breath. He had begun to rock side to side with the angel in his arms. Sam had trudged past to the car. 'Just vanishing like that, I didn't know what happened.'

Castiel didn't say anything; just let Dean engulf Jimmy's body in the hug. Eventually he said, 'I'm sorry. I had to deal something.'

Dean broke the hug and stared at the angel, a small smile on his face. Castiel obviously did something because Dean's smile widened and he laughed a little. He clasped a hand to the angel's shoulder, their eyes locked. They began to lean in towards each other, the space between them bridging quickly.

'Guys, we gotta go!' Sam's voice cut through.

Dean grinned, patted Castiel's arm and walked towards the car.

Time froze. A leaf that had been caught up in the fierce autumn breeze rested stock still on its wind current. Dean was frozen mid stride and Sam was halfway inside the car.

Castiel whipped around to face Jimmy. Jimmy suddenly eye to eye with a loose representation of himself, stepped back, a little alarmed. Automatically his eyes darted away from Castiel to Dean. He noticed the scene had begun to grow fainter and fainter, encroaching inwards as though it was art deemed unsatisfactory.

'What is this?' asked Jimmy. The scene had completed faded but the angel still held onto his subpar form of Jimmy.

'This is my memory,' Castiel said. 'This happened some weeks ago before Zachariah's little master plan failed. He erased Sam and Dean's memories to prove to them that they will always be hunters and to assert his authority over me. It didn't work. He was angry at me at the time and not focused on Sam and Dean. He ripped me out of my vessel and Winchester's failed to his lesson. They were supposed to clock out when the task was done but it seems something went wrong. What I've shown you is a memory but it's your reality, my reality and the Winchester's reality.'

Jimmy struggled, gaping like a fish. 'Um,' he managed.

The angel was beginning to lose his human garb. Slowly, the silvery wisps replaced limbs, moving up his body until the mist was all that remained. 'We haven't got much time. The Winchester's are needed. I need you as my vessel to help them,' the angel said. 'Zachariah, another angel, ripped me from my vessel. _You,' _Castiel said pointedly. 'I couldn't hold on and you slipped away and became a part of the alternate reality he had constructed to teach the Winchester's a lesson.'

'I've already been your vessel?' asked Jimmy. His heart was racing and he felt a strange sickness in his stomach that connected with the confusion and dull panic in his head. 'But, I – I don't remember.'

'Dean and Sam don't remember their true selves either,' the angel replied. Jimmy blinked. The expression on his face must have caused Castiel to feel some compassion for him. 'The Winchester's don't belong in this reality. You, Jimmy Novak, are not supposed to be here either, you are especially not meant to be here.' The thin wisps of the angel crawled around Jimmy's face, fondly as if the angel was comforting him. 'Dean and Sam Winchester's lives had been set in motion long before they were born. They follow a single thread, sometimes it weaves in with others on accident or on purpose, but it has a single end. There is a Jimmy Novak in their actual reality that is known to them as Castiel.'

Jimmy was still utterly confused. 'I have been your vessel,' he repeated.

'Yes,' Castiel said. 'Do you have faith?' he asked.

'Of course!' said Jimmy firmly. 'More than anything I have faith.'

'Do you have faith in me?'

'...Yes.'

'Dean Winchester,' the angel said and showed Jimmy.

Jimmy now saw him as he should be – dirty, grease slicken and life weary. That was the man he should know. He was not meant to know him as Jimmy. Dean was meant to know him as Castiel. Jimmy would know him as a man set adrift, angry at the world. Dean Winchester was capable of so much more than Dean Smith could ever achieve. Winchester would never know the tranquillity Smith had and the trivialities he obsessed over meant nothing to him, his actual self.

The angel's voice rung out. 'Without his family's legacy and father's teachings this would have been the life Dean would have shared with you. Dean is a Winchester. Your world is wrong. It is an alternate. Dean and Sam are bound to their destiny and I am bound to them, to help them and aide them as best as I can. You have already provided your body as a vessel, I ask you do so again to right the wrong_._' The thin silvery wisps had contorted themselves around Jimmy's wrists. 'I need you to be my vessel again. I need you to agree now. I have to help Dean and Sam when Zachariah releases them. He's unaware that he ripped me from you so he won't return you. I had to come myself.'

Castiel stopped but Jimmy sensed he had more to say. There had been a hint of remorse in his voice that Jimmy hadn't expected to hear. 'You don't exist in this reality. Jimmy Novak and Dean don't exist. I don't believe Zachariah is aware of how astray his lesson to the Winchester's has gone. I am sorry to do this, you must know it's not real.'

Jimmy sniffed, feeling loss rise through him, tearing at his throat and threatening to spill from his eyes. 'So this never happened? Me and Dean...'

'The real Jimmy Novak...' Castiel became silent, as if contemplating what to say. The silence grew airy. 'No.' Castiel shook his head. 'No, this isn't real.'

'Then why did you show me your memory?' asked Jimmy. Even as he spoke he felt like his life was unravelling. Threads were being pulled from it and as each thread came lose fragments of his life were yanked from his memory. This time he had the presence of mind to suspect that this was the work of the angel. He accepted it as a great favour.

'Although what you have experienced isn't the real reality, you are still Jimmy Novak in the same way that Dean Smith is Dean Winchester.'

'I still don't understand why you showed me that memory. You could have just taken me as your vessel because I had already agreed to be it.' Jimmy's memories of his life were still being pulled away piece by piece until he could only grasp onto the memories of Dean, with Dean and about Dean.

'Jimmy Novak, maybe I have spent too much time around humans but I believe that I feel guilt and remorse for what happened when I first took you as my vessel. I tore you from your family, your daughter. Each day you spend as my vessel, a little more of Jimmy Novak dies.'

The closer Jimmy was getting to returning to being a vessel again he was losing his memories, _dying. _

'I am what will kill you,' said the angel. 'You will die long before your body dies.'

'I don't need to know this,' Jimmy said. He closed his eyes, trying to block out everything. 'Please, I don't need to know this. Just take me as your vessel again and don't say anything else.' Jimmy knew he couldn't deny Castiel and he had no intention of doing so. But still the angel continued.

'The guilt I feel has prompted me to approach you here rather than to just take you back after Zachariah inadvertently forced me out. I believe I have developed some human feelings. Guilt being one and more feelings of love and compassion than angels generally possess.'

'Your apology is accepted, Castiel. Just please, stop this and hurry up. I willingly accept you back!'

The angel continued. Jimmy felt like screaming. He felt his false memories of Dean deteriorating. Even though they weren't real, just a mistake made by another angel, he wanted them. He wanted to keep them, they were his.

'I have one more thing to say. You love Dean Smith,' the angel said. 'There is something I want to tell you that I hope will ease this suffering.' The wisps that made up the form of the angel seemed to smile, Jimmy couldn't tell how he knew this but he was flooded with warmth from the angel. 'Jimmy Novak, in no matter what reality you exist in, I believe you would have loved Dean regardless. In the actual reality if you had grown to know Dean, you would have loved him as another brother. In this reality you love him as much you as can.'

'What do you mean?'

'Being on earth in a human vessel has taught me much about human emotions. Your vessel, you, have such strong feelings towards Dean that I can't help but experience them myself.'

Jimmy remembered the angel's memory. That hug had been more intimate than he had first suspected. 'You mean you love him?' he asked.

The wisps of the angel tugged fondly at his arms, circling his waist, caressing his hair. Jimmy felt a rush of warmth spread through him again, replacing the tears in his eyes and the empty feeling deep in his stomach. The angel's doing again.

'Jimmy Novak, you have a great capacity for love and for some reason you are drawn to Dean. It is so strong that I can't escape it. It has become a part of me as much as it is a part of you, whatever the reality.'

Jimmy suddenly felt that Castiel was getting urgent and that time was running out. Castiel needed his vessel now.

'I feel love for Dean,' the angel stated.

Jimmy did smile. The angel was no doubt manipulating his feelings so the transition would be easier for him. Jimmy didn't care, he appreciated this kindness.

'I wanted to show you this memory,' Castiel continued. 'I want you to know that Dean would still be loved. I wanted to somehow apologise for what will happen to you.'

'Thank you,' sighed Jimmy. 'Don't let anything happen to him.'

Castiel tightened his hold on Jimmy. 'Are you ready?'

Jimmy floundered for only a mere second as his last remaining memories disappeared. He would become Jimmy Novak, the angel Castiel's vessel. All the wrongs would be righted, Dean would be loved and protected and Jimmy's faith would be proven again.

He had prayed for this.


End file.
